8/10

We ended the 10 game road trip with a win against the Yankees that may have been a little too exciting. A 10 game road trip, no matter who you're playing, can be really tough. And we had to travel to Cincinnati to play a pretty solid Reds team and then New York for a Yankees team that was maybe the hottest in baseball. To come out of that with 8 wins and 2 losses is fantastic. Some thoughts:

- Another one of my minor leaguers came up and has experienced a good amount of success so far. John Mayberry, an outfielder we traded for in the offseason, hit a home run on Saturday for his first career major league hit. He's the first Phillie player to do that since Utley hit a grand slam for his first career hit. There was a possibility that he would have just been called up for the weekend in New York, but Charlie has now said he'll be sticking around for a little while. This is really exciting to me, but I just hope he can see a decent amount of playing time and not just ride the bench. It's tough because our outfielders are pretty solid guys who can or should play every day. But I am definitely happy to have someone on the bench to play in the outfield other than Matt Stairs. Because we're still trying to figure out if he can actually move
- FOX is stupid. John Mayberry's dad is a former major leaguer. So FOX kept showing him sitting in the stands because it was John Jr's first career game. Or so they thought. It was John Jr's first career game, but they were not showing his dad. They just showed some random dude a bunch of times until they eventually realized it wasn't actually John Mayberry Sr. They eventually found him and acknowledged how f'n stupid they are.
- I have been saying this for about a year now probably. Sarge is a horrendous mixture of Bill Cosby, Christopher Walken, and Scooby Doo. Listen to him. Think about it.
- We have another MVP candidate emerging in Carlos Ruiz. Realistically he's not even close to winning MVP, but he has been hot lately. And he's been very clutch. He came up with some very big hits in this series with the Yankees
- JA Happ is nasty. With a 75-80 pitch limit for the game, I didn't expect very much out of him. Six innings, 2 BS runs and no walks later, he had quite the showing and earned a win that the Phillies couldn't get. With the starts he had last season and this start in the New Yankee Stadium, he looks like he will be an extremely legitimate number 3 pitcher for us and probably even a 2. And the game on Saturday he was even limited in the kinds of pitches he was throwing. If his curveball is as good as the rest of his stuff, we're in for many good years with him and Hamels at the top of our rotation.
- Jayson Werth needs to get his act together on defense. Maybe it's the change of scenery going to left field that threw him off, but he just looked like he was doggin' it the whole series. He gunned down Johnny Traitor - I mean Johnny No Credibility - I mean Johnny Let Me Completely Negate the Depth of the Yankees-Red Sox Rivalry - I mean Johnny Damon going home in Sunday's game, so he's not all bad. But I would appreciate him at least looking like he's putting out a little more effort on some of those balls. Happ's first run was his fault. Jayson Werth - how do you sleep at night? But seriously he should step it up a little more. Or is he still drunk from the parade?
- Howard is still in line for a Gold Glove
- All of the lefty concerns about our lineup are ridiculous. We do not need to break up our left handed hitters at all. Yes, Ryan Howard sucks against lefties. But Raul Ibanez is hitting .327 against lefties this season. That's lower than his .360 against righties, but it's nowhere close to bad. And Chase Utley is hitting .319 against lefties compared to .289 against righties. So we don't have to worry about changing a lineup for a left handed pitcher. We should just hope Howard can do something
- I still hate Jimmy. I'm only saying that now because if I let up on him at all, he might get complacent and go back to sucking. So step up your game loser (but seriously nice job recently. D-bag)
- I want to play the Yankees in the World Series. I feel like we came nowhere close to our potential in that park and we still took 2/3.
- Lidge can blow all the saves he wants if we still end up winning. Sure, 11 innings is stressful, but a win is a win. Blowing a save and losing can get real old real fast though. Keep doing what you do though Brad hopefully things will work themselves out

We have the Marlins coming up followed by the Nationals. It's time to start winning some home games. I think 4 out of 6 will be easy, and we should get 5 out of 6 against these two teams. Let's hope for win number 250 tomorrow for Jamie. Dollar Dog Night. If you're going, eat 3 for me.